On the one hand, a
new motive had arisen to favour a more rapid increase of population.
Small children could tend machinery and thereby earn wages to increase
the family takings. This led to an immediate result in increased
population and increased prosperity. But, on the other hand, the rapid
increase of population always tended to outrun the rapid increase of
prosperity, and the more so since the rise of sanitary science began to
drive back the invasions of the grosser and more destructive infectious
diseases which had hitherto kept the population down. The result was
that new forms of disease, distress, and destitution arose; the old
stability was lost, and the new prosperity produced unrest in place of
well-being. The social consciousness was still too immature to deal
collectively with the difficulties and frictions which the industrial
era introduced, and the individualism which under former conditions had
operated wholesomely now acted perniciously to crush the souls and
bodies of the workers, whether men, women, or children.
As we know, the increase of knowledge and the growth of the social
consciousness have slowly acted wholesomely during the past century to
remedy the first evil results of the industrial revolution. The
artificial and abnormal increase of the population has been checked
because it is no longer permissible in most countries to stunt the
minds and bodies of small children by placing them in factories. An
elaborate system of factory legislation was devised, and is still ever
drawing fresh groups of workers within its protective meshes.
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